1. Field of the Invention
This invention is directed to bed sheets and the like, and more particularly, to such items having indicators for distinguishing one size from another.
2. Description of Related Art
Facilities such as hospitals, hotels, other lodging facilities, and the laundries (either onsite or offsite) that serve these commercial facilities handle large volumes of launderable products, for example, sheets, pillow cases, towels, and blankets. Significant time and energy is expended in managing these types of linens, especially with respect to the sizes thereof. By way of example, differently-sized bed sheets typically look alike when mixed together in the laundry process, and therefore laundry workers spend a great deal of time separating and sorting the sheets by size. In addition, even though cleaned sheets may be stored by size, housekeeping workers spend a significant amount of time verifying sheet sizes—both at a given storage location and during the room-to-room housekeeping process.
To help reduce the time for those who use or handle the sheets, a size indicator has typically been added to the sheets. In this regard, a textile mill will weave a roll of fabric of a certain width. The width corresponds, generally, to the width of the bed sheets to be made therefrom. In a separate set of operations, each bed sheet is formed by cutting a length of fabric from the roll, and then sewing or hemming the edges as necessary to provide the appearance of the finished sheet. The size indicator is typically added as part of the forming process, which thus occurs long after the roll of fabric is woven. By way of example, one of the seams, such as along the head of the sheet, may be sewn with a colored seaming thread, rather than a white seaming thread, as is typically used for the seams. However, colored seaming thread is more expensive than white seaming thread. Also, errors often occur in the sewing machine setup, which result in the wrong colored thread being used. The result is costly waste.